


When The End Comes

by ailaikclarke



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Bisexual Cheryl Blossom, Choni endgame, Endgame Cheryl Blossom/Toni Topaz, F/F, Soft Cheryl Blossom, choni
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-06-27 09:58:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15683097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ailaikclarke/pseuds/ailaikclarke
Summary: My name is Cheryl Blossom, and this is the story of how I died.ORThe ambulance is here. Two paramedics come running towards my dead body. One of them shakes her head. “She’s dead.” She says. If only she knew that I was standing right here. The other one grabs a body bag from the ambulance and the sight makes me sick to my stomach. They’re going to put my body inside that bag and take me to the morgue. I am dead, and they can’t help me anymore. Maybe, if someone had noticed me earlier, I would be alive.





	1. I Died Today

I died today.

It was a long, painful death.

I bled out, feeling my body slowly shutting down.

My hand touched every single drop of blood that left my dying body.

Breathing became harder as time went by, but I struggled for air like a dying fish.

I died, and I am still walking the streets, still looking at people, still producing thoughts of my own.

If you’re wondering why I am still able to tell my story, don’t bother asking, because I have no idea. I only know that I watched myself die and now I feel like nothing happened, almost as if it were a dream. Except that it wasn’t a dream, I was stabbed in the gut, and then suffered an agonizing death. I am still coming to terms with the small detail that I am, in fact, dead. I am assuming I present in some sort of gas form, I might be a spirit or something similar, because people don’t seem to notice me. The stab wound disappeared from my stomach, and I went back to having that pristine white skin that I love so much. I am not struggling for air anymore, and my hands are not covered in warm blood like they used to be.

I went back to standing right next to my corpse after exploring the streets to see if people would notice me. I am currently waiting for someone to see and acknowledge the dead girl lying on the ground. When someone does notice my corpse, I feel weird. The scream coming out of this guy’s mouth is deafening, but I guess I can understand. I look at my dead body once more. I was wearing a white dress, which seems a perfect outfit to bleed out in, and it has now turned a bright shade of red. The wound on my stomach was in the perfect place to ruin my very expensive dress, making it look like a scene from some kind of freaky horror movie. My hair is splattered around my head, looking a mess, and my face looks even paler than usual. I’ve lost the colour on my cheeks, and I apparently died with my eyes open.

Someone is going to call an ambulance, convincing themselves that I might still be alive. Spoiler alert: I am most definitely dead. Some people come running after the scream, and I can see fingers dialling 911. I can hear their voices asking for an ambulance and saying that I’m dead. The police is going to come as well. A coroner will follow. Then someone is going to look for my id and find my emergency contact. Toni Topaz, my girlfriend of three years. They’re going to call her and tell her that there’s been an accident, and she’ll know. She’ll be able to tell by the tone of their voice, and she’s going to rush downtown to either the hospital or the police station, I’m not sure. They’re going to tell her that I was already dead when they got here and that they’re currently looking for whoever did this to me. Toni will cry, and scream, and ask them to see my body. They’ll take her to the morgue and get me out of one of those cubicles and open the bad enough to show her my face and still hide the gush on my stomach.

The ambulance is here. Two paramedics come running towards my dead body. One of them shakes her head. _“She’s dead.”_ She says. If only she knew that I was standing right here. The other one grabs a body bag from the ambulance and the sight makes me sick to my stomach. They’re going to put my body inside that bag and take me to the morgue. I am dead, and they can’t help me anymore. Maybe, if someone had noticed me earlier, I would be alive. They take my body to the morgue, where I’m sure some policemen will come to see what happened and ask questions.

My body is now in a refrigerated cubicle. A man has my id in hand, he says Toni’s name out loud. I look over at the clock on the wall, it’s close to three in the morning. Toni is at a party, and thinks I am at a different party with my friends. She’s having fun, but she’s about to get a phone call that is going to change her life. The man is calling her, I am afraid she won’t pick up. When she doesn’t, he tries again. Still to voicemail. I wish I could tell him to wait, that she’s probably drunk or she might even have lost her phone. She probably can’t hear it over the music at the party. He calls again. _“She’ll call me back.”_ She won’t, but he can’t know that, can he?

Two police officers came and asked some questions to the guy who found me and the two paramedics. A doctor said the guy who found me is in shock. I am currently walking freely around. I think I can’t really control where my spirit goes, it goes where it’s needed. It goes where people are talking about me, or where I should be. _“She wasn’t even twenty yet.”_ One of the police officers says. She’s right, I would have turned twenty next week. I guess I’ll be nineteen forever. They’re now talking about Riverdale, with one doctor saying how my family was cursed. He talks about Jason dying when we were sixteen. The whole drug business and my father committing suicide. I wonder if he knows that my father killed my brother and that my mother is some sort of evil witch.

They managed to get a hold of Toni. I am now standing in front of her. She’s just outside the club, she looks upset as the mention of an hospital. I wasn’t sure he’d tell her that I am dead over the phone, but he just did. Toni fell to her knees, bawling like I’ve never seen before. She’s shaking, and tears are coming down her cheeks like blood came rushing down my wound only one hour ago. I am not sure I have a heart anymore but, if I did, it would have broken right at this moment. Seeing Toni this distraught makes me want to die one more time. She’s trying hard to say something, but the words won’t come. She’s choking on her tears and, for a moment, I’m afraid Toni might join me wherever I am.

My name is Cheryl Blossom, and this is the story of how I died.


	2. I'm Still Here

Toni is now in front of the doctor who called her. They’re talking about what happened, and Toni looks confused. The doctor told her where they found my body, and Toni says it’s impossible, that I was on the other side of town. She looks hopeful, almost as if she believed that they were wrong, that the body they found wasn’t mine. _“Maybe someone mugged her and then got killed.”_ The doctor shakes his head, looking down. If he were from Riverdale, he’d probably tell her that the body they rescued definitely belonged to a Blossom, but he has no idea. The doctor is taking her to the refrigerated cubicle and I’m not sure Toni’s ready. I’m not sure I am ready.

He tells her to get ready and slowly wheels me out of the cubicle. A body bag is still covering my lifeless body, and I can see Toni bracing herself as the doctor unzips the top part, revealing my face. I can almost hear Toni’s heart breaking into pieces the moment she realizes that she’s staring at my corpse. That face belonged to me, there’s no way the doctors were wrong. Toni’s legs are shaking, and I’m afraid she’s going to pass out over my dead body. The doctor decides to leave her alone for a few minutes.

 _“I feel like you’re next to me.”_ Toni whispers.

I am. I am standing next to her, trying hard to grab her hand, to make her feel that I am not completely gone. I want her to know I didn’t leave her, I’m keeping my promise, I’m here. I’m next to her.

_“Who did this to you, my love?”_

I don’t know. I can’t remember. I don’t think I saw who killed me. I don’t think I can answer her question.

_“I hope you didn’t suffer too much.”_

I did. Like never before. I think I felt every single drop of blood leaving my body and condemning me to a slow death. I remember the wound burning, almost as if fire had caused it. I remember my lungs feeling like they were slowly turning to dust. I remember my eyes feeling dry, making it too hard to keep them open.

 _“I love you, Cheryl. I love you. I love you like I’ve never loved anyone before you came into my life.”_ She says, chocking on her words. _“I can’t believe you’re gone.”_

I’m not gone.

I’m right here, next to you.

I’ll be here, forever. Looking over you, protecting you. I’ll find a way, my darling. I promise I will.

 _“I am staring at your face, and it looks peaceful.”_ She whispers. _“I know you’re dead, but I feel like you’ve never left me. I can almost feel your hand in mine.”_

Maybe she can actually somehow feel me. Maybe this is not over, and I can find a way to tell her that I haven’t left, that I’m still here.

When the doctor comes back, Toni looks defeated. She has to accept that I’m dead, even though I’m still hanging around, and go back to her life. She doesn’t get to stop because I’m dead. Last night, we left our apartment and we took an uber together and ended up at two very different parties. She was with Fangs, Jughead and Sweet Pea, while I was with Betty and Josie. She got out of the club at around four a.m and, when she grabbed her phone to text me, she found the two missed calls from my phone. She wasn’t worried at first, but broke down when she realized that the replying voice wasn’t mine, but it belonged to a man. She thought someone had stolen my phone at first, then that I’d been in an accident after the mention of an hospital. She never imagined I’d be dead.

I can now see the boys looking for her at the club, calling her name, asking other people if they’ve seen a short girl with pink hair. She’s nowhere to be found, because she’s still next to my dead body. When the doctor closes up the bag with my body inside, Toni takes a deep breath. “It was murder, so we’ll have to perform an autopsy.” He says. She nods, hoping it’ll tell her who stabbed me and left me on the street to die. He tells her they’ll do it in the morning, and that they’ll call her with the results in a couple of days. She walks away, grabs her phone and gasps at the missed calls on her phone. For a moment, she fears something else might have happened, but then realizes that she left the club with no explanation. She sends a text on their group chat, telling them to meet her in a bar.

I am now seeing Fangs, Jughead and Sweet Pea walking to the bar. It’s almost dawn, and they look exhausted. The three of them are wondering what was so important that needed to be announced in person, and I wonder if murder was in their mind. I doubt it. They get to the bar before Toni does, and I’m assuming it is because she’s dragging her feet and breathing hard. Her tiny body is shaking, even though it’s still warm out, and her beautiful eyes are now red and puffy. The three boys understand that something’s wrong the moment she plops down in a chair in front of them. She’s silent for a moment, and I can see in their eyes that they think she was attacked.

 _“Cheryl’s dead.”_ She whispers after a while.

There’s a moment of perfect stillness, with Toni’s sigh hanging mid-hair, and the three speechless boys looking at her, possibly unable to process what she just said. I can see questions lingering on their mouth, but painful silence follows instead. I wish they’d hug her. Hold her like I can’t anymore. Make her feel safe. Tell her that everything’s going to be fine. Sweet Pea launches towards her and wraps his arms around her tiny frame. For a moment, Toni breaths. A second later, she’s bawling on his chest. Fangs and Jughead are quickly by their side, trying to hold her as well, whispering words of comfort. Toni is still shaking, but I can tell she feels like there’s still hope.

She’ll go home to an empty apartment and cry herself to sleep while staring at my empty side of the bed.

 


	3. I Walk With Her

I am thankful for Toni’s body letting her rest during the remaining part of the morning. While she slept, I saw Sweet Pea crying with Fangs, Jughead’s voice breaking as he told Betty, Betty’s face contorting in pain while she talked to Veronica. Toni slept through the whole thing, but she was never left alone. Fangs and Sweet Pea followed her to our apartment, and she let them without uttering a single word. They stayed on the couch while she slept in the spare bedroom _. “I can’t go back to our bed.”_

I died last night, and I now get to see my friends reacting to the news. My family, not my friends. The people who’ve been next to me for what feels like forever. We had so many things planned out, and now I won’t get to experience any of them. “ _We need to find who did this to her.”_ Sweet Pea whispers. I don’t want them to go on some sort of mission to avenge me. I want them to mourn me, but go on with their lives. They can’t let my death ruin their lives.

On day two, Toni forces herself to organize my funeral. She asks for red flowers, and has me cremated in my white dress. The one I was wearing on that famous fourth of July with Jason. She’s alone in that room, pushes the button and watches the flames engulf what’s left of me. She’s then given an urn with my remains in it and asks if they can put a tiny amount of my ashes in a necklace she brought them. Together with the rest of my friends, Toni drives to Sweetwater river and scatters my ashes. _“The empty urn will be buried next to Jason, so that you can be with him forever.”_

On the day of my funeral, Toni is wearing all black. Every single one of my friends talk about me, telling stories from my past, talking about how mean I could be, but how I loved with everything I had. Betty talks about how I accepted her as my cousin even though Jason was already dead, about how it felt like a joke at first, but it became apparent that I saw here as a part of my family. Veronica talks about the Vixens, and other things related to school. Jughead talks about bringing me into the Serpents and having that red jacket custom made for me because I would have bitched about it being black. Everyone laughs, but there’s a weird feeling hanging around. Sweet Pea talks about seeing me as his little sister and knowing from the start that I didn’t need any kind of protection. Fangs talks about taking me on his motorcycle and fearing for his life when he got dirt on my skirt.

Toni is the last one speaking. She’s trembling as she walks to the stage, one hand squeezing the necklace, the other one holding a piece of paper. She reached the microphone and stops, closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. I am now standing right next to her, wishing she’d feel my presence, knowing she might.

 _“I wrote something that I wanted to say today.”_ She says, her voice ready to break. “ _I wrote it because I know that I won’t get to say everything I want to say, because it hurts too much to think that Cheryl’s gone, and that she’s not coming back.”_

She stops again, wipes away the single tear running down her cheek, and breathes hard. _“There are so many little things I could say about this red-haired girl, but nothing seems to do her justice. She is… She was so fierce. Bold. Unapologetic. She was good, with a heart of gold, and loved me with all she had. She could be mean, arrogant and a bitch, but I loved her for her bad qualities as well.”_

More tears have formed in her eyes, and she’s now crying, but trying to keep her composure and talk while everyone is staring at her. _“Cheryl wasn’t perfect, because nobody’s perfect. When we first met, I thought she was a bitch who didn’t care about anybody but herself. She’s kill me if she heard me.”_

People are laughing now, and I am nodding, even though I feel like I’m going to cry. Can spirits cry?

_“I realized soon enough that she had a big heart. A heart that had walls around it, but she let me in. I didn’t have to break the walls, because she opened the door for me. She let me in, she let me love her, she let me bring a bit of light in a life of despair.”_

Her crying is getting harder, making it more difficult to keep speaking.

_“People kept telling me that I was crazy for wanting to be with Cheryl Blossom. What many of you don’t know is that she saved me. She loved me so much she made me feel safe, almost as if nothing bad could ever happen to me as long as she was by my side. The truth is that now I’m scared. Scared of facing life without her by my side. Scared of going back to the apartment we shared and not finding the flowers she’d often get for me. Scared of forgetting what her laugh sounded like. Scared of living in a world where nobody calls me Tt.”_

She stops, grabs the necklace and holds it for a while. _“I found the love of my life when I was only sixteen. I was lucky, lucky enough to call her my girlfriend, lucky enough to love her, lucky enough to be with her. Sometimes I still feel like she’s next to me, I know it’s weird, but I think she kept the promise she made me. She told me she’d never leave me alone.”_

She walks to where the empty urn stands. I walk with her.  _“I love you, Cheryl Blossom.”_

 

 

 


	4. I'm Staring

A phone call is going to wake Toni later today. They’re going to tell her that I bled to death because of a stab wound on my stomach. They’re going to tell her that the wound itself wasn’t so bad, but that I was left there for more than two hours before someone saw me. They’re going to tell her that they didn’t take my purse, which means they stabbed me to kill me. They’re going to tell her that I took a uber back home and that the driver never brought me home. They’re going to tell her that I didn’t know the person who killed me.

She’s later going to find out that my mother sent a guy to kill me and waited for me to be alone before striking. She’s going to find out that he’d been waiting for almost three weeks before realizing that that night was the perfect moment to act. He’d follow me around and jacked my phone to see where I was going and who I was calling. He listened to me telling Betty I was going to take an uber to and from the club, and acted as my uber on my way back home.

She’s going to feel violated when they tell her that he was watching us, studying us, learning our schedules and figuring out when to get me without getting her as well. She’s going to feel scared, and angry because we never noticed the same guy following us.

Toni is going to look at her phone and see the messages I sent her before dying. She’s been avoiding it for days, but I know she’ll have to.

 **Cherry Cola [1.38]** This party is boring. I’m heading home.  
**Cherry Cola [1.42]** Currently waiting on my uber. I hope you’re having fun, and please be careful.  
**Cherry Cola [1.48]** I am seriously hoping we have some pizza rolls in the freezer.

She smiles at her phone while looking at those messages. I can tell that she’s picturing me bored and grunting while looking for an uber and smiling to myself when I finally found one. She’s probably imagining me closing my eyes and dreaming about those pizza rolls. What she doesn’t imagine is the guy taking out a knife and stabbing me in the stomach. She doesn’t imagine the blood that stained the ground under my body. She can’t picture those moments, because the idea of me getting hurt would haunt her forever. She needs to picture me dreaming about pizza rolls, rather than bleeding to death on the ground. I know she’s been trying hard to forget the way my face looked that day at the morgue, but she’s going to dream about it for who knows how long. She’s going to think about me when she can’t sleep, thinking about my smile, my eyes, my hair. She’s going to picture me the way she wants to remember me, happy and _alive_ , but my corpse is going to haunt her.  
The guy who killed me left my phone where I was, but far enough from my body, to avoid me getting it and calling for help. I tried to get it, and managed to reach it minutes before dying. I called an ambulance. Realized I couldn’t speak, hoped they’d be somehow able to understand what had happened by how I was struggling to breathe. Learned they thought it was a prank call. Tried calling Toni, knowing well enough that she wouldn’t reply. I resorted to texting, hoping I’d manage to tell her everything she needed to know before leaving her forever.

 **Cherry Cola [3.26]** I love you toni   
**Cherry Cola [3.27]** Please never forget that I do  
**Cherry Cola [3.27]** Youre my world and the light of my eyes  
**Cherry Cola [3.28]** Whatever happens know I’ll be with you forever  
**Cherry Cola [3.28]** Please dont cry   
**Cherry Cola [3.29]** I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you  
**Cherry Cola [3.30]** You’re the love of my life

I remember how hard it felt to type. I was weak, my fingers were trembling, but I reckon the desperation to let her know I love her kept me going. I needed her to know all those things before going away.

I died at 03.46, staring at a picture of myself kissing Toni in the cheek.

 


End file.
